Currently users assign metadata to images, where the metadata represents keywords that are associated with the images. The metadata is utilized to organize the images or to retrieve the images based on search requests initiated by the users.
For instance, a user that creates one or more images may assign a name that provides a limited description for the image. The image is stored in a folder having other images with similar characteristics, such as, histograms, colors, similarity vectors, etc. Also, the image is associated with a caption that further defines the image. The caption may include information that can be utilized to retrieve the image. A user that attempts to find the image within a large collection of images may initiate a search of the large collection by navigating a folder hierarchy and traversing each image in each folder to locate the image, or the user may utilize an image search that queries the image characteristics that the user believes is associated with the image. The large collection of images is not stored to enable fast retrieval of the images based on metadata associated with the image, and the search response provides result sets that are based on image characteristics that are difficult to calculate.